Alexa Announcements Voice Broadcasting Arrives On All Third-Party Devices

If you own an Alexa device from a company other than Amazon, the Internet retailer has announced, you may soon get access to the service's voice Announcements feature. Amazon has added Announcements support for all certified third-party Alexa devices, expanding the availability of its voice broadcasting capability. The feature works similar to a one-way intercom, enabling users in one room to make an announcement is other rooms via Alexa.

A number of third-party devices with Alexa Voice Service are available, including smart TVs, smart speakers other than Amazon's own Echo lineup, sound bars, and more. Until now, users could only make voice broadcasts to and from Echo speakers. This limited the feature's usefulness for users with other third-party devices.

One obvious use for Announcements is having Alexa alert people in other parts of the home to something taking place in another, such as when you're about to start a movie and don't want to message each individual manually. Until now, however, rooms that only featured third-party Alexa devices were unable to share these voice broadcasts.

According to Amazon, Announcements will be made available to all future third-party Alexa devices that pass the self-tests and get certified. The company promises that it will release continuous improvements to the Announcement features in the future, and though it doesn't reveal what changes it may have planned, Amazon does say that it will work to 'ensure consistency' across the full third-party Alexa devices portfolio.

Companies with an existing certified Alexa built-in product can implement the Announcements feature as of now. For existing device owners who have access to the feature, announcements can be made across Alexa devices by using the phrase, "Alexa, announce [message].' Other Alexa devices in the home will play a short voice clip of your announcement.